I’ve been on the east coast for the past week, working with civic education leaders. I feel exhausted but full of hope.
On March 6-7, the Center for Civic Education hosted their “We the People: National Symposium on Civic Education Research.” I learned so many great things over the course of those two days at Georgetown University and felt grateful to see their We the People program in action.
On Saturday, I had the opportunity to sit on the final panel of the conference, all around AI in education. It was enlivening and even a bit contentious. I enjoyed learning from the perspectives of my fellow panelists, even if we didn’t always agree on what the future of AI in education should be. If you are curious about our conversation, you can view the recording here (starts at 6:24). To get a better sense of where Thinking Nation is situated in these conversations, I’d also encourage you to read the introduction and conclusion of this CivXNow report or the conclusion of this CivXNow report. CivXNow graciously allowed me to be the primary author for each, giving me ample place to reflect on artificial intelligence in a human-centered discipline.
There are so many brilliant people thinking about the state and future of education, and to be in the room with many of them at Georgetown University was particularly special.
From Washington, D.C. I hopped on the Northeast Regional and glided along the tracks through Maryland, Delaware, and the Philadelphia to join hundreds of civic education stakeholders at the Civic Learning Week National Forum hosted by iCivics and the Democracy Knowledge Project (We have an exciting project with DKP that I am excited to announce soon!).
The opening reception on March 8 was at the Eastern State Penitentiary, which is the oldest penitentiary in the U.S. Founded in 1829, it was mostly for solitary confinement during its history. To say that the location was moving would be an understatement. I was moved to tears twice only to remind myself that this is a networking reception and I had better get my act together!
On March 9th, I had the privilege of being on the opening plenary panel connecting Thinking Nation’s work to the Educating for American Democracy roadmap. Directly after, my fellow collaborator Ebony Mckiver from the Social Studies Accelerator and I dove deep into how to build better alignment to EAD in a breakout session. Ebony has built an incredible alignment matrix connecting EAD to CS3 to XQ competencies. I hope she publishes it soon, but can happily put anyone in touch with her who wants it. Naturally, I connected EAD to our New Minimum Standard campaign and pledge. Have you signed the pledge??
That afternoon, I moderated the panel, Civic Education in a Global Context: Collaboratively Moving Forward. The room got to hear about the great work that Trgve Thornheit is doing in U.S. colleges with Third Way Civics, what Kristi Ardiana is doing in Indonesia with Edquip, and what Eugenie Khatschatrian is doing in Europe with EuroClio. Good civics is properly contextualized, and global contextualization is a pivotal part of that!
There are countless stories from the 2 days together there that I’d love to share (not to mention seeing the Declaration of Independence and Independence Hall in the same semiquincentennial week!), but for the sake of time I’ll save them for an in person conversation.
Speaking of, tomorrow morning I am off to the California Council for Social Studies in Anaheim, CA. Will you be there? Please say hi! I present with my colleague Michael Balot-Garza of the Wende Museum at 10:10, but Thinking Nation will be in the exhibit hall during the whole conference!
Happy Civic Learning Week!